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In Ads, the Workers Rise Up ... and Go to Lunch

Experts say some companies are tapping the spirit of Occupy Wall Street in ads. In a TV spot for Las Vegas, above, a woman loudly announces that she is going on vacation.

The woman had had enough. Amid ringing phones and clicking keyboards she climbs up on her desk and shouts through her speakerphone: “I have 47 vacation days. That’s insane.”

“Let’s take back our summer!” she yells as she raises a sign over her head with the phrase “Vacation Now” on it. “Who’s with me?” A handful of employees applaud. The rest look away.

The scene, echoing a pivotal sequence in the 1979 film “Norma Rae,” is not a union recruiting pitch but instead is part of a television ad for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, from a campaign called “Take Back Your Summer.” Other big advertisers like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are also tapping into a sense of frustration among workers to sell products portrayed as minor luxuries.

The jobs report released Friday — showing only 80,000 jobs created in June — reinforced a bleak outlook for the nation’s unemployed. For those lucky enough to have work, the conventional wisdom has been “Keep your head down; don’t make waves.”

That’s the message McDonald’s sent this spring with a campaign called, “It’s your lunch. Take it.” Meant to promote the Premium Chicken Sandwich and the Angus Third Pounder Deluxe burger, it included tag lines like “A lunch revolution has begun,” “It’s time to overthrow the working lunch” and “A sesame seed of revolt has been planted.”

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Huffy plays on the rebellion theme.

In one television advertisement, a woman gets up from her desk and announces, “I’m going to lunch.” Her co-workers try to dissuade her, telling her that the days of taking lunch are long gone.

In a scene reminiscent of “Jerry Maguire,” an inspired colleague stands up and says, “I’m going with her.” The music swells, he tears off the lanyard around his neck and adds, “I don’t want to be chicken, I want to eat it.”

Geoff McCartney, vice president and creative director at DDB Chicago, the agency that worked on the campaign, said the ads were based on a simple precept: “that busy people should take some time for a decent lunch.”

“Work-life balance is really at a tipping point,” he said. “People don’t have a break for lunch, and they feel like they can’t take one for whatever reason.”

Marketers are adopting the theme of workers’ rights at a time when unions themselves are confronting declines in membership and influence. In effect, some labor experts say, they are turning a pro-worker theme on its head to serve the corporate interest.

“It’s an effort by management to co-opt the Occupy Wall Street spirit and redirect it to promote its product,” said Harry Katz, dean of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “They are using it in a somewhat manipulative way.”

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Gold Peak Tea promotes a contest to win a year off work.

Nevertheless, the appeals to downtrodden workers keep coming. If a mere lunch break or a weeklong vacation is not enough of a respite, workers can enter a contest called “Take the Year Off,” sponsored by Gold Peak Tea.

The tea brand, owned by Coca-Cola, will pay $100,000 to the winner to take a year off work to do whatever he or she pleases. Contestants have to describe how they would use their time. Gold Peak will narrow the entries to five finalists, and fans of the brand on Facebook will vote for the winner.

Images from the Facebook page show office workers under various states of duress. In one photo, a man in a suit rests his head in his hands as paperwork piles up around him. In another, a woman is seen kneeling against a file cabinet, her mouth open in a scream of desperation.

Cubicle Rebellion

Indeed, the tone for many of the advertisements is light and funny — a more effective advertising technique than focusing solely on price or promotional offers, according to research by Nielsen.

“You can make a connection when you laugh; you can make a connection when they tug at your heartstrings,” said James Russo, the vice president for global consumer insights at Nielsen. “That is the single most important dynamic.”

Ads that focus on overall value to the consumer — showing that a product is both healthy and affordable, for example — also do well in tough economic times, Mr. Russo said. “The McDonald’s ads work because they focus on the value of the meal and the value of a person’s time,” he said.

Sentimentality is also effective in a recession, according to Nielsen. An ad campaign for Huffy plays on both sentimentality and rebellion, encouraging adults to reclaim the joys of adulthood from the demands of everyday life.

“Adulthood is the bully who stole your bike. Take it back,” reads one ad featuring a woman on a bicycle in a park. Behind her, in the distance, are towering piles of dirty dishes.

“What advertising isn’t about escaping these days?” said Scott Morgan, the president of Brunner, the agency that worked on the campaign for Huffy.

The core target for the campaign is women 30 to 49 years old. “At 4 mph it can outrun anything,” reads another ad showing a woman leaning on her bicycle in the middle of a field of baskets full of laundry. A third ad reads, “Put yourself on your to-do list.”

“It’s just a great way to escape that day-to-day, nose-to-the-grindstone experience,” said Ray Thomson, the executive vice president for marketing and product development at the Huffy Corporation. “People feel a great need to kind of take a breath and say, ‘Hey look, I need to focus on my family and look for economical ways to have fun with my family.’ ”

A version of this article appears in print on July 8, 2012, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: In Ads, the Workers Rise Up ... and Go to Lunch. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe